mickeymath.us

I have purchased a new domain name! The design and implementation of the website will take time (because I want it to be flawless and informative just for YOU), but I think it will be worth the wait.

The main purpose of a website vs. this blog, is that I’d like people to be able to go to the website and immediately locate the information THEY find necessary to them. Whether you like scary rides or children’s rides, the information you select will be displayed. I also would like a more simplified explanation of what I’m trying to accomplish with Mickey Math.

If any of you have ideas PLEASE let me know! My new mentor at work had the brilliant idea (and giving, kind heart) to suggest I create an app. He knows a lot about Android apps, but I don’t know a ton about iPhone apps at this point. If any of my followers and friends have something they want to see on this app or on the website, please let me know so I can try to incorperate it for you.

Another coworker of mine is going to Disney WORLD for 3 weeks over Christmas. This is fabulous news for a lot of you because that means I will soon have data for Disney World, and she will be able to check the accuracy for me! I’m so excited to expand the data for you all.

In other (more personal news) I picked a photographer for my engagements. I was really moved by this photoshoot she did here: inner i art.

Who has gone to Disney recently? I’ve been off the grid, so to speak, and am having a hard time staying on top of all you fabulous Disney fans.

My Disney Trip

I should probably split this post into a few different ones because my day at Disney was BUSY. As I was boarding Winnie the Pooh, the worker asked about my shirt and I explained my goal for being efficient in the park. She told me the average rides ridden in a day is 7. We more than tripled this!

I am going to list the order of events and describe some newly discovered things in this post and tell you about wait time accuracy in another post where I will calculate standard deviations between posted time on the app, posted time on the signs, and the actual wait time.

Order of Events

1. Space Mountain
2. Peterpan
3. Mr Toads
4. Snow White
5. Pinocchio
6. Space Mountain
7. Star Tours
8. Indiana Jones
9. Haunted Mansion
10. Winnie the Pooh
11. Indiana Jones
12. Splash Mountain
13. Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Fantasy Fair
15. Captain EO
16. Star Tours
17. Buzz Lightyear
18. Haunted Mansion
19. Winnie the Pooh
20. Asimo
21. Train
22. Soundsational Parade
23. Small World
24. Splash Mountain
25. Fireworks
26. Space Mountain
27. Space Mountain

We left the park about an hour before it closed because we were EXHAUSTED. If you notice, we did not do Matterhorn. The stupid thing was closed for about 6 days and we happened to be there at that time. Of course you all know Thunder Mountain is closed until October so we didn’t do that ride either. We were going to head to Fantasmic after our two times through Space Mountain but decided we should save our selves for California Adventure the next day.

Some things I learned and Observed

We did Indiana twice and had plans to do it a third time single rider so I could post a video of the new effects but it was closed! I was right in my last post when I said Indiana has a new effect right when you go through the doors. I was so happy we went through two different doors because it turns out each door has a different effect! It was very neat.

Fantasy Faire is actually kind of fun. I never really went to meet characters because my mom never bought me the autograph books or dressed me in anything cute (poor deprived me) BUT the wait was only like 10 minutes and it was kinda funny. Turns out I’m the right height for Sleeping Beauty. Observe.

Too bad I’m not graceful or beautiful. I do have the height thing going for me though!

Asimo is still very cheesy and not worth seeing more than once. I’ve seen it twice and I don’t care to ever see it again.

I went at a very fast pace and ended up walking 10.5 miles or 27.300 steps. I. Was. Tired.

Thanks to everyone who came up and said hi! I met some wonderful new people.

Come Say Hi!

Come find us and say hi!

California Adventure on Tuesday (8/20/13)

This will be my first official plan for California Adventure so that’s news I guess. Now you know how I do California Adventure (or will do it.)

1. Head to the Car’s Fastpass distribution. For those of you who haven’t been to California Adventure recently and haven’t seen the new Car’s Land, I’ve heard complaints of struggles with finding the Fastpass distribution. I will provide you with a map. Ok maybe I won’t because this computer won’t let me do it. 😦 It’s right by the entrance to Carsland though. So don’t go all the way to Radiator Springs.
2. Yesterday at 8:00 AM the wait time was only 25 minutes for Radiator Springs so if that’s the case next week, I will ask my friends to wait in line.
3. We will then probably head to Tower of Terror for the party to wait in line.
4. Monster’s Inc
5. If I’m forced to watch Muppet’s again I might go crazy but this would be a convenient time.
6. If it’s early than 11:00 then Grizzly River Run would be a good one, if it’s after I would grab a Fastpass.
7. California Soarin’ Fastpasses
8. Paradise Pier. The rides on Paradise Pier are a little too scary for my sensitive stomach so I will probably swing on the Silly Swings and maybe do the Ferris Wheel. I don’t like the Swinging cars on the Ferris Wheel which is good because the wait is usually about twice as long!

So hopefully this will all work out and life will be fabulous as always. I’ll let you know how it goes!

I just BARELY read a post by Confessions of a Disnerd that new updates to Indiana Jones have been made. Check out the link to see the video from Touring Plans. Touring Plans has a primary focus of Disney World so this may not be true for Disneyland.

Plan for 8/19/13

A week from yesterday, I will be at Disneyland! Let me start by telling my friends here if you are planning to go that day, come find me and give me a high five please! I will post a picture the day of so you can find me in my sweet shirt.

This trip will be different than any Disney trip I’ve been on. I’m going with my boyfriend’s family. Unfortunately, this means I will have to go at a normal person pace. You see, part of why I rode all the rides by noon last time I visited Disneyland, was because I walk at the speed of light in Disneyland. I’m preparing myself to calm the heck down on Monday. SO, this plan will be a more realistic plan. My boyfriend’s family ultimately gets to decide what we’re doing, so this is very much a rough sketch. BUT I promise you that this time I will have the most detailed explanation of what I did, when I did it and how long I waited, you’ll feel like you were wiith me. You lucky dog.

1. I will go grab fast passes for Space Mountain. It’s what I always do first because it is my all time favorite.
2. We will head to Matterhorn. Unless you’re ok doing single rider (and I have a feeling we won’t do much single rider this time) everything in Fantasyland is best done EARLY.
3. Peterpan. Let me take a moment to gush over how incredible my boyfriend is and tell you he LOVED FANTASYLAND!! I was thinking he would for sure do Snow White and say “alright that’s enough let’s go back to Indiana.” But he loved Fantasyland just like me. It’s a summer miracle.
4. Alice in Wonderland
5. Pinnochio
6. Snow White
7. Probably head to Indiana Jones.

So Monday we will strictly be in Disneyland, and Tuesday we will head to California Adventure. i tracked times to get an idea of what Monday will be like yesterday, but this POS work computer only has the “view only” option on excel documents. From just looking at the numbers, it looks like it was busiest from 3-5. Because we are going at normal people speed, I suspect we will do the normal person activity of napping about this time. Ryan wants to see the parade again, and I’m sure his mom would as well, so we will be back in time for the 6:30 show.

I’ll let you know tomorrow what our plan for California Adventure is. I suspect it will be a whole lot of Tower of Terror and California Screamin’ (while I swing my life away).

Let me know when you’re going back to Disneyland next!

T-shirts have been ordered!

Well I guess there’s not much to say if you read the title. After a lot of anxiety and font changes, my sister and I finally settled on a design and manufacturer.

This would be a great time for me to make a plug for Skyline Shirts. I contacted probably seven different screen printers both local and online and Skyline was beyond helpful. I told them a price I wanted to keep it under and they assured me I could keep it cheap, and do the design I had in mind. After I ordered it I noticed the free shipping option wouldn’t get it to me until after I leave for my next Disney vacation. So I contacted them to see if anything could be done and if the ETA was accurate. They kept it free and assured me I will get it the day before I leave! I am so grateful to all the help they gave me because I’ve been stressing (for really no reason) over these t-shirts. Enough talk, let me show you the shirt!

So for those of you who ordered one, this is what you have to look forward to. I know I am beyond excited for my shirt! If you like the design and logo, then you like Ellen. My sister is incredibly talented and has been way helpful. I’m a math person so I needed all the designer help I could get. Check out her awesome site/resume here.

 

 

 

 

August 4th, 2013

I’ve been busy making friends! My stats for page views are way up. Probably mostly because I posted like 12 things yesterday but whatever gets me attention right? (In the best way possible of course.)

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So yesterday was a great for me in terms of getting wait times documented. I’m feeling good about myself. It was a pretty busy day as a whole, as you suspect a weekend to be.

Splash Mountain was like a roller coaster! (get it… cause it is a roller coaster. At least I think I’m funny.)

I am so glad that I don’t find Splash Mountain fun. If you are normal, and do like Splash Mountain, definitely do not wait in that line. That would be a complete and total waste of time. Get Fastpasses or do single rider.

So after looking at this, I thought it would be interesting to take an average wait time for the day without Radiator Springs. Turns out it brings the average down by 6 minutes. (For those that don’t do a lot of averages, that is a massive change.)

I have heard on several occasions people feeling like they don’t wait as long at California Adventure. Well the fact of the matter is wait times are very similar, there are just more things to wait for at Disneyland. But keep thinking optimistically that will get you far in life.

Don’t forget we’ve got shirts available. I’m putting in an order today so i’m excited to post some pictures of us in them!

Mickey Math shirt

Check out a few cool friends I’ve met:

365 Days at Disney

Hot Moggie Lately

Password: Quilt

Disneyland Wait Time Apps

I’ve been using Mousewait exclusively to track wait times for my blog until last week when someone introduced me to DL Waits. I got curious about what else I was missing. Well turns out there are four pretty popular wait time apps so I’ve decided to do a little summary on each and compare them a bit.

MouseWait

This app is the first app that comes up when you search for a wait time app, and for good reason. It’s rated quite high and I think it has an awesome appearance overall. I really like how it tells you when the time listed was posted. It also tells you about fast passes which a few others neglect to do.  One thing it’s missing is a way to pick favorite rides. You have to scroll through all the rides to find the times you want. Read below and you’ll see what I mean by this. Also a pro, it’s FREE. (Although it does have the option to upgrade without ads.)

WalkeeWait

This one is very similar to MouseWait in terms of what you see initially. There is a sweet Fastpass Return Time feature where you can submit the return time on your fastpass and it will send you an alert 40 and 20 minutes prior to your return time. I know someone like my boyfriend who chooses to forget things quickly (but I do love him) could really benefit from something like this. I’m crazy planner psycho vacationer so I don’t know how helpful that would be to me personally but I think it’s a neat feature. Another thing I really like about this app is that there aren’t as many rides listed. This might be a bad thing to many but I personally don’t care about the wait times for things like “Castle Walk Through” that never really have a wait. It makes it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. This one is also free with ads.

DLR Lines

DLR Lines looks like something I could create after an hour long “Make Your Own App” course at a community rec center: it’s ugly. I’m just glad they didn’t use the “comic sans” font. I like that it says the wait time and then says “Posted 10 Minutes ago”. For those who can’t see that if it was posted at 9:45 and it’s now 10:00 that it was 15 minutes ago (that was sarcasm). This app is extremely cluttered because they have wait times for things that most of us don’t care about. Chip ‘n Dale Tree. I’m not sure even sure where that is in the park but it’s a play area so why would there need to be a wait time? It’s just a little too busy for my taste. Maybe I’m bitter because I paid a dollar for this and it’s not even worth the time to download it free. If you pay for a subscription to something else I guess they will provide you with a plan for the day. If you follow my blog you can plan your own schedule and probably rarely wait. (Maybe I should create plans.. hey there’s an idea. But every day differs so much. Why restrain yourself to a specific schedule?)

DL Waits

This one is not as pretty as MouseWait but I think it’s my favorite. I don’t like that you can’t see when the times were posted but from what I’ve been watching this one is updated more often than MouseWait. My favorite thing about this app is I can pick “favorite” rides and then I have my own personalized list of rides I care about. This has been especially helpful while I’m tracking my times. I don’t have to scroll through all the rides that aren’t interesting in terms of data. This one is also free with ads and probably the one I will be using the most in the park. It isn’t the prettiest in terms of design but it’s not as ugly as it could be either.

Hope this helped for those of you like me who go to Disneyland for shorter amounts of time and need to be as efficient as possible. Happy waiting!

Brief Discovered Tips

Because I have failed to update you recently, I have way too much data that really isn’t terribly fascinating. I’ve decided to summarize a few random things I’ve found over the weekend and past week.

Closed Rides

I know before I started doing this I always had little mini anxiety attacks when I noticed one of my favorite rides was closed. I have never been to Disneyland longer than two days at a time so I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to ride the ride. The fact of the matter is rides are typically not closed for longer than an hour. If you notice a ride is closed, go to something near by and check back. One thing I have noticed though,  is right after the ride has opened up after being closed for some amount of time, the wait is about 50% longer. It goes back down to an average wait time after about an hour though. This isn’t the case for every ride but I have noticed it occasionally with Radiator Springs Racers, Slash Mountain, Space Mountain and Indiana Jones.

First Thing’s First

If you are going to be in Disneyland or California Adventure for only 1-2 days I highly suggest getting to the park as soon as it opens. For the first two hours of the day, park capacity is at about 20%-40% and the wait times are substantially shorter. However, everyone thinks “I’m going to run right for the ride that has the longest wait first thing in the morning and then I won’t wait as long”. Let me show you the data from June 4th of Radiator Springs Racers:

Granted this is an extreme example. The highest point of the day for this ride is not always first thing in the morning but it does get pretty close to it’s max because everyone thinks to rush there first. Where you want to go first is the Fastpass line for this ride. My sister and I went right after this opened last August and I waited in line to just get a fast pass first thing in the morning for 40 minutes. It is not THAT popular anymore (thank goodness) but I still expect it to be a pretty populated area and I would go there first. Then I would head over to do California Soarin’. (I’m not much of a roller coaster fan or I’d suggest Tower of Terror.)

At Disneyland I would definitely go get a fast pass for Space Mountain and then get right in line to ride it. That is my favorite ride so I try to get fast passes every chance I can and will wait in line if the wait is less than 20 minutes. If it looks too long for comfort, I’d go to Matterhorn. That one doesn’t have a fast pass so if the wait is less than 30 minutes I will wait in line.

Staying Until Close

I’ve been trying to see if it’s really worth it to stay until close. I have had troubles staying up late enough everyday to really see if it’s worth it but looking at my data it doesn’t look like the rides really decrease much in wait time. I will stay until close because I like to get my money’s worth but if you are going to be in the area for more than three days I’d just say go home when you’re tired.

I still don’t have a computer of my own yet so my  posts are brief and I apologize. I am staying on top of data so will update any MAJOR findings. “I do apologize but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”  Watch this. You’re welcome. Bad News Commercial.

Delayed Updates

I’m really sorry I’ve had troubles updating my findings. I am lacking a very important key to the whole blogging thing: a computer. This far into it I’ve been using my work computers, but some days are easier to do personal things than others.

I was so excited to track this weekend and I got all hours for Friday and Sunday but completely messed stuff up on Saturday. I’m quite sad about it. I will update Friday really soon though! I’ve got the data entered I just need to make it look nice.

One thing I did notice though is Sunday was extremely busy overall. I’ll give details soon. It seemed busier than Saturday even which I thought was interesting. Both Friday and Saturday the park opened at 9:00 instead of 8:00 and I’m still not sure why because it wasn’t on the park calendar that way. Anyway. Hope Monday is great!

PS. Check out this logo my sister made me!